According to SSD developers, the faster the new generation PCIe SSDs such as Gen 5.0 and Gen 6.0 operate, the greater the amount of heat generated during operation of these SSDs, which can affect performance and harm to data on the NAND flash chip.
“There’s a lot we’re doing to keep SSD power within a reasonable range. However, SSDs are bound to get hotter, in the same way that CPUs and GPUs gave off more heat in the 1990s. As we move to Gen 5.0 and Gen 6.0 SSDs, we may need to look at active cooling solutions,” said Sebastien Jean, Technical Director at Phison, an SSD driver chip maker.
SSDs operate most efficiently at ideal temperatures of 25ºC to 50ºC (77ºF to 122ºF). To achieve this threshold on Gen5 and Gen6 SSDs, manufacturers may have to integrate a cooling fan
Basically, CPU and GPU models can operate normally in extremely high temperatures, up to 100 degrees Celsius or higher (in exchange, the durability of silicon will degrade over time, in parallel. is to lose the ability to overclock). The same goes for the SSD controller. If these controllers are made by companies like TSCM, they can function properly at temperatures up to 120 degrees Celsius, according to Phison.
The problem is, the excessive heat emitted by the SSD controller “burns up” the 3D NAND memory ICs, making them much less reliable at temperatures of 75 degrees Celsius or higher. So, to avoid data loss during operation, SSD controller often starts throttling in terms of performance, invisibly causing SSD performance to suffer at high temperatures.
Normally, SSDs tend to stop working on their own when the sensors on the drive detect that the temperature of the NAND reaches above 80 degrees Celsius. In that case, the use of cooling solutions is necessary for SSDs. . In the case of M.2 form-factor SSDs, they have 2 natural ways to dissipate heat: conduction (through the copper/gold contacts on the drive) and convection (dissipating heat to the surrounding air) .
However, the above passive cooling solution is still not enough to ‘cool’ new high-performance SSDs. Some high-end Gen 4 SSDs have benefited greatly from the integration of dedicated heatsinks, and we could see that trend becoming more common with SSDs in the future. Accordingly, PCIe 5.0 drives may need to be equipped with large heat sinks, even active cooling solutions such as using cooling fans.
Of course, not all SSDs can use active cooling, or even incorporate an oversized heatsink. For example, laptops (accounting for about 75% of PC sales) cannot apply the above solution due to the size limitation of components. Therefore, SSD developers like Phison have to adopt different strategies.
One of them is to use chips developed in a smaller process. With the same number of transistors, a 7 nm type chip will consume less power and will generate less heat than a similar chip manufactured using the 16 nm process.